our common
bedchamber, that holiest of all temples that are consecrated to human
attachments whenever the heart is pure of man and woman and the love is
strong--I being in that bedchamber, once the temple now the sepulchre of
our happiness,--I there, and my wife--my innocent wife--in a dungeon. As
the morning light began to break, somebody knocked at the door; it was
Hannah; she took my hand--misery levels all feeble distinctions of
station, sex, age--she noticed my excessive feverishness, and gravely
remonstrated with me upon the necessity there was that I should maintain
as much health as possible for the sake of 'others,' if not for myself.
She then brought me some tea, which refreshed me greatly; for I had
tasted nothing at all beyond a little water since the preceding
morning's breakfast. This refreshment seemed to relax and thaw the stiff
frozen state of cheerless, rayless despair in which I had passed the
night; I became susceptible of consolation--that consolation which lies
involved in kindness and gentleness of manner--if not susceptible more
than before of any positive hope. I sat down; and, having no witnesses
to my weakness but this kind and faithful woman, I wept, and I found a
relief in tears; and she, with the ready sympathy of woman, wept along
with me. All at once she ventured upon the circumstances (so far as she
had been able to collect them from the reports of those who had been
present at the examination) of our calamity. There was little indeed
either to excite or to gratify any interest or curiosity separate from
the _personal_ interest inevitably connected with a case to which there
were two such parties as a brutal, sensual, degraded ruffian, on one
side in character of accuser, and on the other as defendant, a meek
angel of a woman, timid and fainting from the horrors of her situation,
and under the licentious gaze of the crowd--yet, at the same time, bold
in conscious innocence, and in the very teeth of the suspicions which
beset her, winning the good opinion, as well as the good wishes of all
who saw her. There had been at this first examination little for her to
say beyond the assigning her name, age, and place of abode; and here it
was fortunate that her own excellent good sense concurred with her
perfect integrity and intuitive hatred of all indirect or crooked
courses in prompting her to an undisguised statement of the simple
truth, without a momentary hesitation or attempt either at evas